UWM Study to Test Effectiveness of 'Relationship Coaching'
Nicole Roberts and Jonathan Kanter
Can simple coaching in how to communicate better with one’s partner improve the overall relationship? Can it help partners regulate their emotions? Can it also address the depression that may stem from relationship trouble?
Nicole Roberts and Jonathan Kanter, two UWM assistant professors of psychology, are putting these questions to the test in a study of 100 undergraduate couples who are romantically involved.
“The novel part of this will be whether we can measure improvement in the way couples actually interact as a result of an intervention,” says Roberts, whose research focuses on the cultural and biological forces that shape emotion and emotion regulation. “No one has ever done that by observing couples in a lab setting before.”
The researchers will measure each couple’s overt show of emotions. And, since many people hold in their feelings, each partner also will wear sensors that record their physiological cues, like heart rate, pulse, sweating, and breathing rates.
They also will gauge whether relationship coaching with one partner can help improve communication between both.
Because research shows that relationships are closely associated with depression, one treatment focuses specifically on improving those interactions, says Kanter, who specializes in improving behavioral psychotherapy for patients with depression.
“We’ve found that people just need a little support to be able to communicate better,” says Kanter.
Couples eligible for the study are healthy and have been involved romantically for at least six months. They will be asked to talk about an issue they disagree on, to help the researchers learn how couples solve problems and what emotions they show in the process.
Then, for some couples, one partner will receive “relationship coaching” for eight weeks. During that time, behaviors the client exhibits that may ultimately hurt his or her relationship will be addressed.
The couples will then come together and have another problem-solving conversation, to see if they relate to one another better as a result of the coaching.
The study makes two assumptions, says Kanter. The first one is that one or both partners are avoiding some type of behavior that could help or protect the relationship.
“It may be they’re not talking about their feelings or that they are not asserting their needs,” he says. “Avoidance is a universal impulse.”
The second assumption is that the same behavior patterns that stymie communication with their partner are the ones that will reveal themselves in the relationship that each participant builds with the relationship coach.
After this initial study, Kanter and Roberts hope to extend their research to a therapy or counseling approach, with people seeking help for mental health problems or relationship distress.
“When the therapist can deal with a client’s behavior live, as it’s happening, it ‘supercharges’ the remedy,” says Kanter, who is also director of the Depression Treatment Specialty Clinic and the coordinator of the Psychology Clinic at UWM.
By this time next year, the researchers anticipate knowing whether relationship coaching has proven useful in stabilizing negative emotions and improving the couples’ relationships. Participants will be able to receive a copy of their findings at that time.
Roberts has conducted a previous study of emotion and communication which analyzed the effects of job-related stress in the marriages of police officers. She found that stress and exhaustion greatly influenced whether couples were able to control their emotions and communicate constructively.
“People don’t realize that they react to another’s negativity unconsciously,” she says. “One partner’s negativity elicits the same from the other partner and, once that happens, it’s harder to get control. In many happy couples, that cycle is broken with affection or humor.”
The study, which appeared in the Journal of Marriage and the Family (2001), indicated that couples would naturally ‘mobilize’ for difficult marital interactions in the same way that the human body prepares for the “fight or flight” response to danger, she says. Also, when officers were particularly stressed, they fell into a pattern of withdrawal which their mate did not know how to overcome.
“It’s that intense emotion burning on the inside and the refusal to show it that is so deadly to our health,” she says. “It’s like you’re all revved up with nowhere to go.”
Couples interested in participating in the new “relationship coaching” study can send an email to relationship-study@uwm.edu
###
Kanter
joined the faculty in 2003, and Roberts in 2004. For more about Kanter, log onto
www.uwm.edu/Dept/Psychology/faculty/kanter.html.
For Roberts, log onto www.uwm.edu/Dept/Psychology/faculty/roberts.html.
URL: http://www.uwm.edu/News/Features/06.02/Relationship_Coaching.html
Copyright 2006
by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, all rights reserved.
If you have questions or comments about this page, please send e-mail
to: gwc@uwm.edu
